Best Dry Cat Food in 2018

Cat food has always come into the debate by pet nutritionists. In the wild, cats have evolved to fulfill their nutrition and dietary requirement from prey. But today, cats have been adopted as a mainstream pet by humans, and it’s our responsibility to know about ins and outs of the wet and dry cat food. Considering the dental benefits, cat owners often opt for dry cat food. However, liquid cat food has its own edge over the dry ones in terms of hydration.

Having said, we’ve created this article to reveal the best dry cat foods, ingredients to look for in a cat food, and how exactly should you feed a cat. Read along to discover everything:

Why Dry Cat Food?

In the wake of continued debate over wet and dry cat food, cat nutritionists have elaborated advantages of dry cat food over the wet ones. Having said, feeding your feline friend with dry cat food can help it have better dental health, as dry cat food helps in removing plaque from its teeth to some extent. In addition, dry cat food is easy to feed and less likely to be spoiled.

Choosing the Best Dry Cat Food Brands

Now, that you know about ins and outs of the best dry cat food, we have listed the most reliable and worthy dry cat food brands below. We examined tons of customers’ reviews and conducted individual testing to come up with following best dry cat foods.

Purina Dry Cat Food

Purina stands as among the pioneers in the cat food industry. With quality-rich proteins, Purina’s cat foods offer balanced nutrition to maintain a healthy immune system in cats. In addition, the Omega-6 fatty acids provide cats with healthy skin.

Rachel Ray Nutrish

Rachel Ray’s Nutrish offers finest real salmon. With no ground corn, wheat, or soy, this dry cat is free from almost every additive, preservative, flavor or any other artificial ingredient. It makes Rachel Ray Nutrish a worthy pick for natural dry cat food lovers.

Meow Mix

Meow Mix offers 100% balanced nutrition, encompassing all the vital vitamins and minerals. This dry cat food is rich in quality protein and aids in strengthening muscles and joints in cats. In addition, this cat food is preferred for those who’re looking for a well-balanced diet for cats.

How we found the Best Dry Food for Cat?

We finalized our list of the best dry cat food brands by studying almost every ingredient in the well-known cat food. While conducting our research, we discovered various popular brands offering subpar ingredients that were harmful to cats’ health. After researching over hundreds of dry cat food brands, we were able to list the safest, reliable, and nutrition-rich dry cat food.

Below are the factors that we considered while choosing the best dry cat food:

Meat – Prime Source of Nutrition

Irrefutably, cats in the wild prefer raw meat over any other food, and same case applies to dry cat food. We assessed tons of dry cat foods, and found them listing ingredients in decreasing order as per their weight. Thus, we only opted brands that offer meat, coming from a quality source such as chicken or salmon. Formulas that don’t offer meat aren’t included in our list.

Keeping Unidentified Ingredients at Bay

Various cat food brands include artificial additives, preservatives, ingredients, and dyes in their formula. However, such cat food poses the severe risk to cats’ health and could even become life-threatening. For instance, the popular synthetic version of vitamin K1, vitamin k3 could be toxic to cats’ liver, lungs, kidney, and more organs. Even a small dose of such ingredients is highly risky to both humans and cats.

Meat from Unidentified Sources

While performing research on the best dry cat food, we came up with some brands that labeled terms such as meat meal, meat by product and ocean fish on their products. However, they didn’t disclose the source of meat. However, such meat could have come from animals involved in road kill or sudden deaths. Therefore, we have included only the natural dry cat food brands that have included meat from healthy and natural sources.

Special Ingredients in the Top Dry Cat Foods Brands

The debate begins around what exactly should you look for in the best dry cat food. Considering, diverse nutrition requirement of cats, one should look for following ingredients when choosing the best dry cat food:

High-Quality Protein

Being wild or pet, cats require protein from quality sources. In addition, protein helps in building amino acids like taurine in cats. It helps in maintaining a healthy skin, internal-organ functions, and coats in cats. However, there’s a debate about how much protein does cats require to stay healthy, but, there isn’t any exact quantity revealed yet.

Carbs

Apart from proteins, carbs serve as a preferable source of energy. Though, carbs aren’t essential for cats, but, carbs in right quantity aid in promoting good health among cats. The best dry cat foods offer quality-rich carbs extracted from reliable sources like wheat, beet pulp, or rice. On top, carbs help cats in digesting food easily while retaining more nutrients.

Being a nutritional specialist, Gary holds a Master’s degree in Food Sciences. With having an obsession of pets, Gary loves to write about the dietary and nutritional requirements of human beings as well as Feline and Canine.